While I use konqueror as my "work-horse" browser (on Linux, I don't do slaveryware, see the sig), that may be why I've not noticed the firefox/iceweasel slowdown everyone complains about on Linux. I run Gentoo/~amd64 and while I don't do performance profiling and recompiling, I of course do compile it myself, using standard gcc -march=opteron-sse3 -O2 (plus some other individual flags I like) optimizations for both xul-runner and firefox/iceweasel itself. It may also help that I'm running 8 gigs RAM on (now older) dual Opteron 290s, so dual-dual-core 2.8 GHz Opterons.
But as I said, I've never noticed iceweasel/firefox being much slower than konqueror (on KDE 3.5), except for startup which takes a bit but not/that/ long, and I have the option checked to keep a couple konqueror instances loaded, so konqueror would be/expected/ to be faster at "startup" since it's already loaded and just has to show itself.
Now talking about slow, KDE 4.2's konqueror/is/ slow for me, even from warm-cache (there's still a keep X instances loaded option I'm told but I've not loaded 4.2 since I read that specifically to double-check whether I have it on, unlike 3.5 it's off by default in 4.2). But KDE 3 is extremely mature by now and has undergone several releases where the primary focus was optimization, while KDE 4 is still adding features and remains noticeably slower for me, I think as a result of they fact that they've really not focused on optimization yet as they have had multiple releases on 3.x to do. But 4.2 is starting to get at least/close/ to usable now. With the just released 4.2.1, which I've not yet updated to yet, or more likely, 4.3.x, maybe I'll actually find it worth switching from 3.5.10.
Well, I/did/ say "tolerable". If the band's bad enough that means shutting off the amplification entirely... or all but one, making it a solo...
But seriously, a lot of the time the band isn't so bad, they just don't have anyone enforcing a decent idea of mix/balance. In a small venue the guitar guys running their own amps blasting out everything else, including the vocals, that sort of thing. As long as the mix guy can impose enough control (playing an almost entirely different program for the monitors and the mains, thus giving the band what they think they want, if it comes to that) on the program to rebalance the channels effectively, and yes, that might mean killing a particularly bad channel, it can often be made tolerable, as I said. But if they're running independent amps, God help you (and them)!
Staying on-topic, a band that is out of sync can't be fixed at the board, unless I send a click-track into their in-ear monitors AND they use it.
LOL. I can just imagine that. The confusion of "multi-sync techno-poly-rhythms" as I've heard it referred to, then all of a sudden they get a click-track coming thru the monitors, the first time they've heard it, all LIVE!
Then in keeping with the theme, have the click-track on a frequency that's already close to feedback...
If that isn't a scenario for "This is Spinal Tap, Next Generation", I don't know what is! [Interview with the board man:] "But the volume on the click-tracker goes to eleven!"
Meanwhile, there's the guy that deliberately runs feedback loops. I was watching a youtube Scooter (genre: happy hardcore) concert video (Jumping all over the World tour) recently and saw HP (lead vocalist, "singer" is arguably stretching it) deliberately squealing the mic, positioning it right in front of the monitor, etc. I could just imagine the sound guys going crazy watching their meters peaking, but that's exactly the kind of antics he's a legend for, so if they weren't ready for it the first time, I'm sure they were the next! That's the sort of band it'd be fun to run the sound for (as long as the antics weren't blowing anything), as you could get away with a lot and it'd just blend in with the show.
People do indeed have different skills... or are sensitive to different torture, that being a different way to put it. Like many thousands or tens of thousands of folks, I volunteer to run soundboards for various local organizations, but don't claim to be anywhere near pro, but perhaps because of the substandard equipment and layouts I've worked with over the years, I've apparently a rather developed sensitivity to overdrive/clipping, threshold feedback loops, and "tape on the dashboard" effect.
One that gets me regularly is overdriven/clipping distortion. The other nite, someone at work was playing "music" on their cellphone. "It's pretty loud for a cellphone" she said, while it was about all I could do to stop from running away yelling with my fingers in my ears. The poor 1/2 watt or whatever speaker was distorting so much it was worse than fingernails on a chalkboard! Momentarily I had the opportunity to reach for the thing and turn it down perhaps 30 percent or so, without much loss in volume, but a HUGE improvement in quality due to the fact that it wasn't over-driving/clip-distorting any more! MUCH better!
I used to work across from a church, with speakers shaped like bells hung in the "bell" tower. They'd play recorded bells. I guess they finally upgraded to CDs, but before that... Have you ever heard the effect of stretched tape on a bell recording? It was actually funny sometimes, watching people smile and turn to listen to the "bells"... then hear the draaagg and pitch-bend, and realize it was only a (very streeeaaaatttched) recording... or worse yet, not realize it, commenting how nice the bells were, while I and others stood there gritting our teeth.
Sitting in the audience at anything "live" can be most discomforting on occasion too, hearing the threshold telltales that say the system's/this/ close from going into the dreaded feedback squeal, yet being bound by politeness from jumping dozens of rows of chairs and half way across the hall to turn the thing down a notch NOW, then notch the resonating frequency out of the EQ after the immediate threat is passed. I end up just sitting there, ready for the fingers in the ears if the squeal actually does hit, but otherwise outwardly calm and of proper decorum, whatever internal struggle to resist that leap might be going on.
Yet most folks don't notice a thing. What's especially "interesting" is when the guys with the "phat" car stereos or the like ask what I think about their system... yeah, it's loud enough, but the bass is all rattling (apparently to some, this is the mark of "good bass" ) or the tweeters are whining in your ears.
But, like I said, I don't claim to be pro. I do like to think I at least know enough about it to recognize a decent one tho. I've always held that a great audio engineer can often make a bad performance at least tolerable, but one stroke of a fat finger at the sound board can well ruin the performance of the best, and a sound guy that doesn't know what to do to stop the squeal (or rolllingg bbooom), or knows what to do but has such underpowered equipment (and/or poor positioning) he must choose between lack of volume and constantly running at feedback threshold (maybe not even an EQ to notch out)... forget it.
Your lap dances link goes to Rocky Mountain News. Did you know yesterday was their last day in print, a couple months short of 150 years in print? (FWIW the link still works, for now.) Back in the 80s I went to school in the area and remember them as the state edition most subscribed. I hadn't thought of them in years until yesterday, but it's still sad to know they are gone.
The name and news archives remain "for sale". The paper didn't convert fast enough to electronic, I suppose. They had an electronic edition as most do now, and I suppose it's possible someone will buy the name and take it online-only, but it would appear to have been too little, too late. Now it's only the Denver Post.
Fittingly given where people are getting their news now, I read it on MSNBC.
If you're immediately contesting a ticket while driving, it's not a parking ticket, but a driving ticket... aka a "moving violation". It's parkingticket.com and they say parking ticket in the summary, so something tells me your moving violation isn't covered.
I've seen 8 American karaoke labels die in the last 10 years, and as of now there's only like 3 or 4 left.
And if they're product is proprietary, trying to artificially prevent the most natural human tendency[1] in the world rather than encourage sharing and expanding upon what one finds exciting and enjoyable, I say GOOD RIDDANCE!
[1] Yes, I'd call it the most natural human tendency, including procreation, because what is procreation but a prime example of wanting to share what one loves with/who/ one loves, to the mutual pleasure of both, or in some cases maybe I should say all, participants? Further, sharing a work of art or intellect can be argued to be reproduction/procreation.
There's a thread up on gentoo-dev warning about one such compatibility issue. bash-4.0 is apparently in the Gentoo tree already (I've not actually checked) but is and will remain for the time being hard-masked.
The compatibility issue in question is escaped semicolons in subshells, apparently done either as part of the new case expansion stuff (suggested in-thread) or for better POSIX compatibility (suggested by the new features list in the release announcement), but it's backward incompatible with enough ebuilds/eclasses/etc to cause Gentoo problems, thus the keeping it hard-masked until the issues are worked thru.
I think the appeal is the/reason/ they "encourage" trial by jury. If they don't go trial by jury and the defendant loses, that's a possible appeal right there, unless the judge made it plain enough that you/did/ have a right to a jury and just what you lost without it. So they've CYAed in that regard if it's jury. Otherwise, they have to provide enough case record of trying to convince you to go jury after all that it can't be easily appealed, and that process in itself is enough to get most people to reconsider -- which some would argue is precisely the point.
But, what the system really tries for is to get the defendant to cop a plea to a lessor charge,/before/ it gets to trial, either jury or not. If the defendant won't take a plea offered by the prosecutor (and the conditions of said offer are/entirely/ up to the prosecutor, tho the judge can "encourage" them if need be, but AFAIK doesn't interfere with that under normal circumstances), then it's trial time, and the the default is a jury trial.
So really the best someone accused of KP could hope for would be an offer of something that won't get him on the KP list, only regular sex offender, and with the PR points a prosecutor can get from being tough on it, they'll be lucky to get that. More likely, it'll be take the worst images, make 20 charges based on them, then offer to drop all but say one or five, with a mandatory sex offender AND KP registration part of the deal, even on just the 1-5. Reject that and you're looking at a trial.
Your comment could be taken several ways as OJ's an interesting case. If you're talking the Nichole Smith case, he had a separate criminal trial, which while many (including myself) thought he was likely guilty, I agreed with the jury verdict as the evidence simply didn't get to a "beyond reasonable doubt" level, particularly with the evidence chain of custody issues. After that failed, Nichole's folks (I think it was, I don't follow celebrities as close as some) tried a civil suit and won, at the lessor civil case "preponderance of evidence" level.
Both those I agree with, tho it's worth noting that they didn't get all that much as OJ was able to stash most of his wealth (what remained after his defense team was thru collecting, anyway) out of reach of the court. But in context, it's worth pointing out that (1) the trials were separate, and (2) while I think he did it, I'm comfortable with a potential killer going free because it simply wasn't proven, as I said, especially given the chain of custody and tainted evidence issues, and while I think there's a chance he didn't, I'm comfortable with him losing the second case if innocent, because there sure was a lot of evidence at that level.
If you're talking about the more recent armed theft or whatever case, I've followed it very little, to the point I know he along with others was accused of roughing up someone in ordered to try to get back some memorabilia, but I don't even know for sure whether it was civil or criminal, tho I think criminal and that he was found guilty. But honestly,/. or other geek/tech news is far more interesting to me than following something like that, these days, and I simply don't.
I can see the words, and the sentences individually make sense, but the ideas behind them... I think I'd have to see the process in action (in rather more detail than this single case) in ordered to really understand. The ideals are great, but I just don't understand how it works in practice. (And I said this as someone who grew up in Kenya considers himself reasonably well traveled, tho unfortunately the exposure has been mostly western.)
But, Viva Variety! as they say. One thing I hate is USians (well, anyone for that matter, but it seems the USians are the ones doing it the most the last few years) trying to cram their ideas down everyone else's throats! A friendly debate, zealously propounding what one believes while accepting that others do the same, is one thing; trying to force it on someone is something entirely different.
AFAIK, gift cards/certificates/checks, etc, are NOT initially taxed, precisely/because/ the tax is paid when they're redeemed. I know that's the way it has been around here, anyway. They're handled straight across. A five dollar bill gets you a five dollar gift check/card/certificate/whatever.
It's also worth noting that the business doesn't book the sale of the gift check/card/certificate, either. It's considered the equivalent of a cash for cash transaction, a five dollar bill for five ones, or whatever. The sale is booked only when the gift is redeemed, or in areas where it can expire or if there are service fees attached (as there are to gift Visa/MC cards most of the time), at the time of expiration or charge of said fees.
According to ArsTechnica coverage, one of the interesting things about Swedish law is that sometimes, as here, civil and criminal cases can be dealt with in parallel in the same court room. Thus, we have both the state prosecutors and their equivalent of the RIAA both making their case, and even if some particular doesn't apply to the criminal case, it can still be valid to the civil case taking place in parallel in the same court room.
Combined civil/criminal trials like that seems to violate all sorts of ideas of justice folks like me here in the US might have, but it's the way their system works, and TPB seems reasonably confident of the outcome, much more so than they'd be here in the US under comparable civil-only circumstances, so who are we to say?
In real life I've never in my life ever used a weapon, not even a stick, against another living creature, or even wanted to.
You've never used roach or ant spray? I suppose it's possible, altho I'd suppose you don't live in Phoenix... No rat traps or d-Con(R)? Or do you not consider ants/roaches/rats "living creatures"?
But I agree with your concept tho I'd not characterize it as "favorite", but certainly a major theme. FWIW, my folks didn't encourage and wouldn't buy us toy guns (with the exception, for some reason, of squirt guns), but that didn't stop me or my playmates from finding and using appropriately shaped sticks. We never hunted or anything either, and used milk and eggs but fish or meat was extremely rare at home. OTOH, stray dogs, etc, used to "disappear"...
I think most OpenWRT/DD-WRT, etc, firewalls do srcport randomization reasonably well, at least if they're based on a reasonably new 2.4 or 2.6 kernel. There's a lot of home firewalls running those sorts of user-upgraded firmware. And there's a reasonable number of folks running a Linux/Netfilter based firewall either on their normally used computers directly, or on a dedicated firewall computer (say an old 586), too. Plus all those that went with a *BSD based firewall instead.
Sure, by absolute numbers, there's likely a lot more running shipped or upgraded manufacturer's image firmware, but that wasn't your claim. Your claim was "any" home firewall, which without further qualification means it just takes one counterexample to disprove the claim, and I'm sure there's at least dozens if not hundreds or thousands of examples among/.ers reading this article alone.
But if you believe Netfilter based *WRT or standard Linux firewalls on relatively recent kernels aren't sufficiently random, by all means, please provide a link to a discussion thereof ASAP, as I and I'm sure many other/.ers need to make some changes in our configs...
[pedantic] OK, so you're saying "PIN numbers", where PIN is "Personal Identification Number". Do you enter your "PIN numbers" at the "PIN number keyboard board" on the "ATM machines"? At least you could have been consistent, and used "password words" while you were at it? =:^) [/pedantic]
Meanwhile, while I agree with your general point, I believe it would have been made more effectively, at least to many here at/. (who pride themselves on being a "thinking" audience highly valuing freedom, true or not), had you not invoked the "Think of the children!!1!!111!" bit. Unfortunately, both it and the "war on terror" have been so overused by the fascist/authoritarian/big-brother types recently that they have lost much of their original effectiveness, and indeed, many of us have a gut reaction every time we see them invoked of "Oh, another proponent of/that/ stuff, time to watch my liberties as he's obviously trying to take one or more away, and is grasping for some semblance of justification."
So next time, consider leaving that bit out. The effect on personal financial and etc. information and passwords and the like, should be enough on its own to get people rethinking their position. The graphical physical reference, be it child abuse, rape your women, or indeed, personal anal penetration, really does more to hurt your case than help, at least here on/., tho it may arguably go a long way when targeting a different audience, the remaining "Bible, Bush & Homeland" types. (FWIW, the work "homeland" alone has strong fascist links, which is why I wondered why in the world the powers that be chose the particular term "Homeland Security". Could it be they were so indoctrinated they didn't realize the historical links of homeland and fatherland to Nazi Germany? Unless it was a deliberate reference?)
Those are the "mainline" or "linus" sources (thus answering one of the things you were unsure of), yes. They're "official" to the degree that any particular sources are official, but that's partly the point. There's no "official" sources, only a particular series that's the linus/mainline tree that the community strongly and definitely encourages people to be compatible with and ultimately integrate their patchsets into, but/only/ to that degree.
Meanwhile, not only does git go to some lengths to facilitate branches (as it calls forks), but the kernel development process is strongly dependent on a heavily forked kernel development environment assumption. Every one of the subsystem maintainers effectively has his own official tree/fork, plus often dozens of experimental forks, some for private testing, some for public distribution of specifically targeted testing. While new drivers and experimental features are encouraged to ultimately merge with the linus tree, the expectation and general practice is that some fork of said tree will be where the new code lives until that occurs.
The kernel lives and breaths, develops, and dies, by forking (or in the latter case, if forking should ever itself die). It's a built-in assumption, and there's simply no way Linux as we know it could or would exist, without that assumption. Thus, the only ones discouraging forking would be those bent on its destruction.
Now, talk incompatible/unfriendly forking, and it's a somewhat different story, but even there, it's allowed if someone should wish, just rather impractical from a continuing maintenance standpoint, and because few would follow.
BTW, the older kernel mentioned was 2.6.16, I believe. I forget who the maintainer was but he backported new drivers, etc, for some time, just to give folks a less fast-paced choice beyond going back to 2.4, for those that wanted it. He has since announced that either 2.6.28 or 2.6.29 (I think.28 but IDR for sure) he'll do the same thing with.
An initrd, or the modern equivalent, an initramfs which is appended to the kernel so it isn't a separate file to track, is useful in (at least) two primary cases.
Rich0 named one, where the rootfs is layered on top of complex stuff like LVM2 that requires user mode initialization. There's no way to pass boot-time parameters to the kernel to load lvm2, it has to be loaded by user mode, which means if the rootfs is on lvm2, there must be some pre-real-root minimal-usermode available to load lvm2, so root can be loaded.
The second is rather a generalization of the above, to cover the case of the binary binary kernels shipped with most distributions. There's a/lot/ of different storage hardware out there that the rootfs could be installed on, a/variety/ of different hardware that the user could be using for basic input/display, and quite a number of reasonable filesystem choices for rootfs, as well. While a kernel with support for all that or even just the more common choices built-in could certainly be built, it/would/ be bloated. And while say britty (Braille tty) drivers aren't commonly required, it's sure nice to be able to support the sightless. So they are built as modules which can be loaded as necessary. But then those modules need stored somewhere, and some method needs to be available to load them early in the boot sequence, before the rootfs has been mounted since some of them will be required to mount it. An initrd/initramfs is a great solution, allowing maximum flexibility while keeping the size of the core kernel to something reasonable.
The second case is of course why most distributions ship with an initrd. They can support far more storage hardware, user interface devices, and rootfs choices that way, while still shipping a binary kernel and not requiring a user to recompile anything. However, once a user has advanced to the point where they can pick their hardware and basic kernel option out of some version of menuconfig and issue a few simple commands to recompile a kernel, thereby customizing it for their own system, there's usually (but for the complex stuff like lvm2) little or no reason they can't eliminate that initrd/initramfs entirely, building at least the modules needed to load the rootfs, as part of that customization. Since doing so simplifies the kernel build and installation process substantially while eliminating a number of possible boot-time issues, IMO it's actually better to eliminate the initrd/initramfs except in the few cases it's still actually necessary, once a user gets to that point and is building their own kernels.
I'm in the same situation, I read much less SF than I used to, but come at it from a much different angle.
I always was and remain a "hard" science fiction buff. I never was really into the fantasy/medieval stuff at all. Sure I'd read it occasionally and subscribed to F&SF for awhile, but it was always toleration more than anything, while wishing they'd replace it with "real" science fiction! Even the "big" Fantasy works I got and read (if I ever did read, some I meant to but never got around to it), it was more a peer and cultural literacy thing than really enjoying it like I did good "real" science fiction.
For me, there was always a purpose. For me, good science fiction has always been an "epistemological", an exploration of the reaches and limits of human knowledge, where it might plausibly take us if current science trends are projected as much as possibly logically into the future, and how science development so projected might affect humans both as a race and individually. The more "real" science and less contradiction with real science there was, even tho it was a projection into the future, the more I enjoyed it!
So SF was for me an exploration of knowledge, but it actually ended up being far more than that for me, personally. Many readers with a psychology bent will be familiar with Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development. Wrong or right in the general case, they do happen to be a reasonable fit for describing the moral maturation process I went thru growing up. As it happened, I entered high school basically a Kohlberg moral stage ahead of where most of my peers were at the time (I was at stage four, law and order, going in, while they were at stage three, peer orientation), and while I attended a so-called "Christian" high school where moral development was nominally one of the first priorities and did progress a stage over that period, it certainly was NOT due to the molding of those in charge at the school, because they were/far/ too busy working on the majority at the peer orientation to get them to law and order, to pay attention to me, already at law and order, maturing as best I could toward stage five, rights orientation.
So the fact that I DID progress to Kohlberg stage five, rights orientation, during high school was almost an accident, as far as the actions of the so-called Christian faculty and staff were concerned. In fact, it was the constant presentation of moral dilemmas in the science fiction I was reading at the time, quite against the wishes of said school adults and thus in spite of them, that stimulated my moral development during that period, and as a result, that still plays a rather large part in the now internalized ideals by which I conduct myself today.
But... "when I was a child, I though as a child," as the (Bible) saying goes. As an adult, I have "put away childish things." Yes, I still enjoy a good scifi novel now and then, but it's not like it used to be, because I've matured out of that phase. While I strongly believe it's worthwhile to consider the evolution of science and our response to it as we go, indeed,/before/ we go, a teen is rightly more future-focused than an adult of a couple decades already is going to be, and they have a LOT more time to spend on that sort of thing, as well. Similarly, all those formerly intensely interesting moral quandaries, intensely interesting to me personally as they forced me to explore entirely new degrees of moral implications, stimulating my development as I did so, aren't quite so intensely interesting any more. I've explored the moral implications and for better or worse, I've already come to terms with how I relate to the universe and those around me. That's no longer new territory and thus while still interesting, doesn't have quite the personal degree of urgency that it used to.
So... I really don't do as much science fiction as I used to. It's not that I don't enjoy it any more, it's that it doesn't hold the urgency it used
I like your idea, but I take it a bit farther myself. I'd like to see no OS with more than a plurality, none with an outright majority of the market. Thus, based more or less on current share but with MS taking a hit to be distributed elsewhere (so I'm not as biased against the BSDs as this might look, I'd LOVE for them to have the 30% share and Apple to get 1.5%), I'd be happy to see MS at say 35-45% (still a nice plurality), Linux and Apple at 20-30% each, and OpenSolaris and a couple of the open source BSDs (probably Free and Dragonfly, from what I know of BSDs which isn't much) at 1.5 to 5% each.
So say 41+29+24+2.4+2.0+1.8 (to two significant digits each, the reason it doesn't total exactly 100%).
But... honestly, I have my doubts as to whether MS as we know it is sustainable at below heavy-monopoly share levels (say below 70% or so). Take a look at the browser share recently. IE's total dropped below 70% in December (tho January may be up slightly, given that weekends and holidays skew away from IE since it has heavier corporate use, and December was nearly half holiday for many). Firefox is the biggest alternative but Safari, Chrome, and other, seem to be growing as well. What's the skuttlebutt on that? Well, MS' ability to rule the web by mindshare (based on marketshare) has all but disappeared. Now that they've dropped to that, many are saying there doesn't seem to be a bottom any time soon, and people are actually talking about it possibly dropping below 50% majority share for the first time in a LONG time. Only ask yourself what if it does? Is there really a floor at 40%? 30%?
Personally, if they drop below say the mid 50s, I don't see a floor below until they hit the 20s to low 30s. At that point, their installed base is high enough to carry them for some time, a decade or longer, on momentum from people who simply won't switch to anything else, period, even if MS does virtually nothing. Only they won't be doing nothing.
But with very little doubt, should that start to happen, the MS we know today will cease to exist. No, the company itself probably won't disappear, but it'll be MUCH MUCH different. It'll HAVE to be, because today, it simply doesn't know how to behave unless it's a monopoly in its assigned areas, and wouldn't know what to do if it wasn't. That would HAVE to change, and change it would!
A post I read up-page got me thinking. What happens if Windows 7 DOES bomb much like Vista has? Well MS is still making money pretty much hand over fist, and that's not likely to change right away no matter what. But what could/would they say, what sort of answer could they give?
Well, between that and the headline that's the cause of this entire article, the layoffs, what I came up with was this: Suppose MS says something like this:
"OK, we got it. We listened to our customers. They are saying they like XP as it is. It does what they need it to do, and they're happy with it. But they're asking for it on netbooks at one end, and we have multi-core machines to worry about at the other. And their asking for lower prices.
"So we're going to give them what they asked for. We'll support and provide bug and security fixes, and we'll work on the back end to continue to increase the richness of experience possible at the low end and the number of cores and parallelization at the high end, and we're going to continue to support new hardware and Internet standards, but our users say we're a mature product and that they us to keep what they have usable, not continue to force new stuff on them just for the sake of it. We're announcing accross the board 75% price cuts on list price, and will be announcing further price reductions over time. Meanwhile, since we're a mature product now, we don't need to spend as much on new development and will be laying off 50% (or 75%, or whatever) of our workforce."
Consider: The development and costs for XP and Vista are sunk costs now, and by the time we know if Windows 7 is bombing or not, the same wil
Note that Google is already marketing Linux based OS, Android, and no, it's not just for phones, people are adapting it and running it on netbooks (among other things) already.
I don't see them reversing course and switching to BSD any time soon, tho for all I know they already have one about to drop. But I DO know they already have a Linux based OS, Android. Now, ask yourself why Google might have chosen Linux over BSD for Android... but I'll let you draw your own conclusions there.
The most annoying thing about DSL for me is the fact that my phone is NOT tied up all the time. I get a telemarketing call five to ten times a day, on average.
Serious question, tho you might need to read thru to see it: You have broadband, why do you keep a regular voice phone connected if you're getting that many spam calls over it.
Now DSL piggybacking over a voice line does complicate things a bit as compared to say my cable Internet connection (no, no CATV, I don't even have a TV to use CATV, just Internet), or the dedicated (not piggybacked) "dry pair" DSL I had for awhile, but just because the DSL mandates a voice line to piggyback on doesn't mean you actually have to/use/ that voice line -- you can just consider it part of the cost of Internet, if you like.
So what then to use for voice? Well, many folks use cell phones, which tend to be lower spam call volume at least in the US due to the cell-user-pays-air-time rules and resulting laws about unsolicited calls to them. For those that have or can at least partially justify them for other reasons, that's good, but I could never honestly justify the extra cost of cell service over standard landline -- for my usage, I just can't justify it.
So what do I use, and the following why this post? VoIP. There are a lot of providers out there and I really do urge you to do some research and find the one that's right for you, as unlike either landline or cell service, the fact that the provider doesn't have to have any local physical plant means it's FULLY competitive -- the provider can be literally anywhere, worldwide, that has reasonable connectivity, and provide service equally worldwide. That means it's EXTREMELY competitive, a buyer's market, and the buyer who shops around can get some very nice deals indeed, with some very nice perks indeed.
All those extra services like caller-ID and voice-mail that cost extra money on land-lines? Competition has made them standard on VoIP. It's hard to find a provider that does NOT offer them. Also, due to the nature of the technology, nearly every provider offering US service has a base or near-base plan that's flat-rate per-month nationwide calling -- no domestic long-distance charges. Many include Canada as well. Providers who offer numbers in other nations likewise generally offer either flat-rate or extremely competitive (in nations where regulations require charges, usually where the monopolist telco is government run and they're regulating out the VoIP alternative, tho that's getting rarer due to various international telecom agreements) national rates.
So with all that standard, and with rates pretty standardized for that base as well, what do providers compete on? Extra features, features landline telcos generally don't offer at all. Some (such as Lingo) offer flat rate international calling plans and international second numbers at very reasonable (+$5/mo) rates. These work very well for users with family or friends in covered countries. Others offer fancier services. My provider (viavoice) offers automated wakeup and "special date" (anniversary, bday, etc) calls, among other things.
But the service that makes the difference in terms of phone spam, and as I've been with them for awhile, the service that I've found of most value and the "keeper" reason I'm not likely to jump providers, is their unidentified-caller routing/blocking choices. They have the usual "route directly to voicemail", "play a recording saying this user doesn't accept unidentified callers", "busy signal", etc, options. But the one I use and have found so compelling is the "ask them to enter a series of digits to prove it's a real human calling before ringing thru" option. People who choose to block their caller-id can still call me, but they have to dial a few extra random digits at the prompt, in ordered to do so.
You'd be surprised at how much that reduces your phone spam! Coupled with the fact that I deliberately did NOT transfer my e
OTOH I use my real name (Duncan) pretty much everywhere I post on the net, partly because I tend to believe if it's worth the trouble to post, it's worth sticking my name on and standing by, and I do just that. Actually, that's my last name. I used first and last, John Duncan, but found that even more common than simply Duncan, so eventually just dropped the John.
But while I believe I've established a decent enough online "brand" for most folks that know me from one forum/newsgroup/mailing-list to identify me on another if they come across me, the name is common enough, and there's little enough else about me on the net, that I expect it'd be relatively difficult to make the association without my help.
Still, as I said, I do stick by what I post enough to stick my name on it, and if some potential employer or the like does make the connection and finds my posts offensive enough to negatively affect my chances of working there, I expect I'd rather not be working there anyway, and they probably just saved me a lot of grief later by dropping me from consideration when they did. If they think they're better off without me, good, because if it's due to what I've posted, I/know/ I'm better off without them, and if my posts help that happen before the relationship ever starts, so much the better! I'll be better off elsewhere anyway.
"I am as big a fan of Open [Employment] as the next slashdotter, but there seems to be this feeling that because some[one] is [a free[man] or open [employed] it is automatically better."
While the work a freeman and a slave may produce may indeed be the same, depending on your ethics, yes, one is "automatically better." While the work a free/libre program and a closed/unfree/slaveryware program produce may be the same, depending on your ethics as a dev or awareness as a user, yes, one may be better.
Now, I don't believe it's yet time to do the Emancipation Proclamation thing for software. but I DO believe that an ethical software developer must respect the rights of his users. Failing to do so may not yet be against the law tho like slavery I hope there comes a time it is, but while law and ethics may be related concepts, they aren't identical, and an action may be entirely permitted (even required) by one, while being entirely prohibited by the other.
Note that such a philosophy may initially appear to permit "ethical" copyright violation and that it does, but "ethical" and "intelligent" are independent concepts. If a developer has been so unethical as to presume to abrogate the user's rights of use, study, modification, and sharing of both the original and modified versions, then he has already demonstrated that he's a black-hat and not to be trusted. What else may he be trying to hide in that naturally transparent box he's attempting to keep painted black? Whatever it is, how can I trust the code of someone who has already demonstrated his disregard for my rights as an intelligent and free human, who has already demonstrated a desire to subvert my rights to his uses.
IMO, one effective way to handle it would be to simply enforce informed consent for the usual liability waivers. If the dev or company wishes to keep the code locked up, let them, but since that interferes with the informed consent of the user, liability waivers should be held to be invalid -- the people that supplied the binaries must either supply the sources (without impinging my user rights to reuse them), or be held responsible for the effects of the black box they supplied. Since developers/companies would be insane to take on uninsured damage liability, and the insurance companies would demand pretty stiff premiums to ensure what wasn't open for inspection, the problem would take care of itself, while still allowing the few companies that DO supply software while assuming the damages (there are a few, think embedded airplane OSs) to continue to do so without freeing source. But even most of them may ultimately switch to mostly freedomware, both because they'd be able to get it at least partially pre-audited. and because the culture of freedom that would develop in such a case would ultimately require it in practice even if not enforced by law.
Meanwhile, for me personally, since if I can't both inspect the code and have others I trust evaluate it as well (without further legal impediments), I won't release the supplier from operational liability, there's little proprietaryware I could run even if I wanted to and might otherwise overlook their insulting me as a potential user, believing I value my rights so little as to give them up for the mere privilege of being insulted and taken advantage of as a subhuman slave, because I'm not allowed to use it without releasing them from liability, which I cannot and will not do. OTOH, there's no problem with freedomware altho they also require liability waivers, because I can both read the sources for myself and get the opinions of others I trust as to the quality and potential reliability and security of said code.
Slashdot Mirror
While I use konqueror as my "work-horse" browser (on Linux, I don't do slaveryware, see the sig), that may be why I've not noticed the firefox/iceweasel slowdown everyone complains about on Linux. I run Gentoo/~amd64 and while I don't do performance profiling and recompiling, I of course do compile it myself, using standard gcc -march=opteron-sse3 -O2 (plus some other individual flags I like) optimizations for both xul-runner and firefox/iceweasel itself. It may also help that I'm running 8 gigs RAM on (now older) dual Opteron 290s, so dual-dual-core 2.8 GHz Opterons.
But as I said, I've never noticed iceweasel/firefox being much slower than konqueror (on KDE 3.5), except for startup which takes a bit but not /that/ long, and I have the option checked to keep a couple konqueror instances loaded, so konqueror would be /expected/ to be faster at "startup" since it's already loaded and just has to show itself.
Now talking about slow, KDE 4.2's konqueror /is/ slow for me, even from warm-cache (there's still a keep X instances loaded option I'm told but I've not loaded 4.2 since I read that specifically to double-check whether I have it on, unlike 3.5 it's off by default in 4.2). But KDE 3 is extremely mature by now and has undergone several releases where the primary focus was optimization, while KDE 4 is still adding features and remains noticeably slower for me, I think as a result of they fact that they've really not focused on optimization yet as they have had multiple releases on 3.x to do. But 4.2 is starting to get at least /close/ to usable now. With the just released 4.2.1, which I've not yet updated to yet, or more likely, 4.3.x, maybe I'll actually find it worth switching from 3.5.10.
Well, I /did/ say "tolerable". If the band's bad enough that means shutting off the amplification entirely... or all but one, making it a solo...
But seriously, a lot of the time the band isn't so bad, they just don't have anyone enforcing a decent idea of mix/balance. In a small venue the guitar guys running their own amps blasting out everything else, including the vocals, that sort of thing. As long as the mix guy can impose enough control (playing an almost entirely different program for the monitors and the mains, thus giving the band what they think they want, if it comes to that) on the program to rebalance the channels effectively, and yes, that might mean killing a particularly bad channel, it can often be made tolerable, as I said. But if they're running independent amps, God help you (and them)!
Staying on-topic, a band that is out of sync can't be fixed at the board, unless I send a click-track into their in-ear monitors AND they use it.
LOL. I can just imagine that. The confusion of "multi-sync techno-poly-rhythms" as I've heard it referred to, then all of a sudden they get a click-track coming thru the monitors, the first time they've heard it, all LIVE!
Then in keeping with the theme, have the click-track on a frequency that's already close to feedback...
If that isn't a scenario for "This is Spinal Tap, Next Generation", I don't know what is! [Interview with the board man:] "But the volume on the click-tracker goes to eleven!"
Meanwhile, there's the guy that deliberately runs feedback loops. I was watching a youtube Scooter (genre: happy hardcore) concert video (Jumping all over the World tour) recently and saw HP (lead vocalist, "singer" is arguably stretching it) deliberately squealing the mic, positioning it right in front of the monitor, etc. I could just imagine the sound guys going crazy watching their meters peaking, but that's exactly the kind of antics he's a legend for, so if they weren't ready for it the first time, I'm sure they were the next! That's the sort of band it'd be fun to run the sound for (as long as the antics weren't blowing anything), as you could get away with a lot and it'd just blend in with the show.
People do indeed have different skills... or are sensitive to different torture, that being a different way to put it. Like many thousands or tens of thousands of folks, I volunteer to run soundboards for various local organizations, but don't claim to be anywhere near pro, but perhaps because of the substandard equipment and layouts I've worked with over the years, I've apparently a rather developed sensitivity to overdrive/clipping, threshold feedback loops, and "tape on the dashboard" effect.
One that gets me regularly is overdriven/clipping distortion. The other nite, someone at work was playing "music" on their cellphone. "It's pretty loud for a cellphone" she said, while it was about all I could do to stop from running away yelling with my fingers in my ears. The poor 1/2 watt or whatever speaker was distorting so much it was worse than fingernails on a chalkboard! Momentarily I had the opportunity to reach for the thing and turn it down perhaps 30 percent or so, without much loss in volume, but a HUGE improvement in quality due to the fact that it wasn't over-driving/clip-distorting any more! MUCH better!
I used to work across from a church, with speakers shaped like bells hung in the "bell" tower. They'd play recorded bells. I guess they finally upgraded to CDs, but before that... Have you ever heard the effect of stretched tape on a bell recording? It was actually funny sometimes, watching people smile and turn to listen to the "bells"... then hear the draaagg and pitch-bend, and realize it was only a (very streeeaaaatttched) recording... or worse yet, not realize it, commenting how nice the bells were, while I and others stood there gritting our teeth.
Sitting in the audience at anything "live" can be most discomforting on occasion too, hearing the threshold telltales that say the system's /this/ close from going into the dreaded feedback squeal, yet being bound by politeness from jumping dozens of rows of chairs and half way across the hall to turn the thing down a notch NOW, then notch the resonating frequency out of the EQ after the immediate threat is passed. I end up just sitting there, ready for the fingers in the ears if the squeal actually does hit, but otherwise outwardly calm and of proper decorum, whatever internal struggle to resist that leap might be going on.
Yet most folks don't notice a thing. What's especially "interesting" is when the guys with the "phat" car stereos or the like ask what I think about their system... yeah, it's loud enough, but the bass is all rattling (apparently to some, this is the mark of "good bass" ) or the tweeters are whining in your ears.
But, like I said, I don't claim to be pro. I do like to think I at least know enough about it to recognize a decent one tho. I've always held that a great audio engineer can often make a bad performance at least tolerable, but one stroke of a fat finger at the sound board can well ruin the performance of the best, and a sound guy that doesn't know what to do to stop the squeal (or rolllingg bbooom), or knows what to do but has such underpowered equipment (and/or poor positioning) he must choose between lack of volume and constantly running at feedback threshold (maybe not even an EQ to notch out)... forget it.
Your lap dances link goes to Rocky Mountain News. Did you know yesterday was their last day in print, a couple months short of 150 years in print? (FWIW the link still works, for now.) Back in the 80s I went to school in the area and remember them as the state edition most subscribed. I hadn't thought of them in years until yesterday, but it's still sad to know they are gone.
The name and news archives remain "for sale". The paper didn't convert fast enough to electronic, I suppose. They had an electronic edition as most do now, and I suppose it's possible someone will buy the name and take it online-only, but it would appear to have been too little, too late. Now it's only the Denver Post.
Fittingly given where people are getting their news now, I read it on MSNBC.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29412240/
Here's the Google on the RMN, with the top stories now on their closure:
http://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_en&hl=en&q=%22rocky+mountain+news%22
If you're immediately contesting a ticket while driving, it's not a parking ticket, but a driving ticket... aka a "moving violation". It's parkingticket.com and they say parking ticket in the summary, so something tells me your moving violation isn't covered.
I've seen 8 American karaoke labels die in the last 10 years, and as of now there's only like 3 or 4 left.
And if they're product is proprietary, trying to artificially prevent the most natural human tendency[1] in the world rather than encourage sharing and expanding upon what one finds exciting and enjoyable, I say GOOD RIDDANCE!
[1] Yes, I'd call it the most natural human tendency, including procreation, because what is procreation but a prime example of wanting to share what one loves with /who/ one loves, to the mutual pleasure of both, or in some cases maybe I should say all, participants? Further, sharing a work of art or intellect can be argued to be reproduction/procreation.
Thanks, Uberlord. I was going to post something similar, but having it straight from the horse's mouth as they say is far better.
Um, not that I'm calling you a horse, that's just the saying! =;^)
There's a thread up on gentoo-dev warning about one such compatibility issue. bash-4.0 is apparently in the Gentoo tree already (I've not actually checked) but is and will remain for the time being hard-masked.
The compatibility issue in question is escaped semicolons in subshells, apparently done either as part of the new case expansion stuff (suggested in-thread) or for better POSIX compatibility (suggested by the new features list in the release announcement), but it's backward incompatible with enough ebuilds/eclasses/etc to cause Gentoo problems, thus the keeping it hard-masked until the issues are worked thru.
Here's a link to the thread as seen on gmane:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/59774
IANAL, etc...
I think the appeal is the /reason/ they "encourage" trial by jury. If they don't go trial by jury and the defendant loses, that's a possible appeal right there, unless the judge made it plain enough that you /did/ have a right to a jury and just what you lost without it. So they've CYAed in that regard if it's jury. Otherwise, they have to provide enough case record of trying to convince you to go jury after all that it can't be easily appealed, and that process in itself is enough to get most people to reconsider -- which some would argue is precisely the point.
But, what the system really tries for is to get the defendant to cop a plea to a lessor charge, /before/ it gets to trial, either jury or not. If the defendant won't take a plea offered by the prosecutor (and the conditions of said offer are /entirely/ up to the prosecutor, tho the judge can "encourage" them if need be, but AFAIK doesn't interfere with that under normal circumstances), then it's trial time, and the the default is a jury trial.
So really the best someone accused of KP could hope for would be an offer of something that won't get him on the KP list, only regular sex offender, and with the PR points a prosecutor can get from being tough on it, they'll be lucky to get that. More likely, it'll be take the worst images, make 20 charges based on them, then offer to drop all but say one or five, with a mandatory sex offender AND KP registration part of the deal, even on just the 1-5. Reject that and you're looking at a trial.
Your comment could be taken several ways as OJ's an interesting case. If you're talking the Nichole Smith case, he had a separate criminal trial, which while many (including myself) thought he was likely guilty, I agreed with the jury verdict as the evidence simply didn't get to a "beyond reasonable doubt" level, particularly with the evidence chain of custody issues. After that failed, Nichole's folks (I think it was, I don't follow celebrities as close as some) tried a civil suit and won, at the lessor civil case "preponderance of evidence" level.
Both those I agree with, tho it's worth noting that they didn't get all that much as OJ was able to stash most of his wealth (what remained after his defense team was thru collecting, anyway) out of reach of the court. But in context, it's worth pointing out that (1) the trials were separate, and (2) while I think he did it, I'm comfortable with a potential killer going free because it simply wasn't proven, as I said, especially given the chain of custody and tainted evidence issues, and while I think there's a chance he didn't, I'm comfortable with him losing the second case if innocent, because there sure was a lot of evidence at that level.
If you're talking about the more recent armed theft or whatever case, I've followed it very little, to the point I know he along with others was accused of roughing up someone in ordered to try to get back some memorabilia, but I don't even know for sure whether it was civil or criminal, tho I think criminal and that he was found guilty. But honestly, /. or other geek/tech news is far more interesting to me than following something like that, these days, and I simply don't.
I can see the words, and the sentences individually make sense, but the ideas behind them... I think I'd have to see the process in action (in rather more detail than this single case) in ordered to really understand. The ideals are great, but I just don't understand how it works in practice. (And I said this as someone who grew up in Kenya considers himself reasonably well traveled, tho unfortunately the exposure has been mostly western.)
But, Viva Variety! as they say. One thing I hate is USians (well, anyone for that matter, but it seems the USians are the ones doing it the most the last few years) trying to cram their ideas down everyone else's throats! A friendly debate, zealously propounding what one believes while accepting that others do the same, is one thing; trying to force it on someone is something entirely different.
AFAIK, gift cards/certificates/checks, etc, are NOT initially taxed, precisely /because/ the tax is paid when they're redeemed. I know that's the way it has been around here, anyway. They're handled straight across. A five dollar bill gets you a five dollar gift check/card/certificate/whatever.
It's also worth noting that the business doesn't book the sale of the gift check/card/certificate, either. It's considered the equivalent of a cash for cash transaction, a five dollar bill for five ones, or whatever. The sale is booked only when the gift is redeemed, or in areas where it can expire or if there are service fees attached (as there are to gift Visa/MC cards most of the time), at the time of expiration or charge of said fees.
So no double taxation.
According to ArsTechnica coverage, one of the interesting things about Swedish law is that sometimes, as here, civil and criminal cases can be dealt with in parallel in the same court room. Thus, we have both the state prosecutors and their equivalent of the RIAA both making their case, and even if some particular doesn't apply to the criminal case, it can still be valid to the civil case taking place in parallel in the same court room.
Combined civil/criminal trials like that seems to violate all sorts of ideas of justice folks like me here in the US might have, but it's the way their system works, and TPB seems reasonably confident of the outcome, much more so than they'd be here in the US under comparable civil-only circumstances, so who are we to say?
In real life I've never in my life ever used a weapon, not even a stick, against another living creature, or even wanted to.
You've never used roach or ant spray? I suppose it's possible, altho I'd suppose you don't live in Phoenix... No rat traps or d-Con(R)? Or do you not consider ants/roaches/rats "living creatures"?
But I agree with your concept tho I'd not characterize it as "favorite", but certainly a major theme. FWIW, my folks didn't encourage and wouldn't buy us toy guns (with the exception, for some reason, of squirt guns), but that didn't stop me or my playmates from finding and using appropriately shaped sticks. We never hunted or anything either, and used milk and eggs but fish or meat was extremely rare at home. OTOH, stray dogs, etc, used to "disappear"...
I think most OpenWRT/DD-WRT, etc, firewalls do srcport randomization reasonably well, at least if they're based on a reasonably new 2.4 or 2.6 kernel. There's a lot of home firewalls running those sorts of user-upgraded firmware. And there's a reasonable number of folks running a Linux/Netfilter based firewall either on their normally used computers directly, or on a dedicated firewall computer (say an old 586), too. Plus all those that went with a *BSD based firewall instead.
Sure, by absolute numbers, there's likely a lot more running shipped or upgraded manufacturer's image firmware, but that wasn't your claim. Your claim was "any" home firewall, which without further qualification means it just takes one counterexample to disprove the claim, and I'm sure there's at least dozens if not hundreds or thousands of examples among /.ers reading this article alone.
But if you believe Netfilter based *WRT or standard Linux firewalls on relatively recent kernels aren't sufficiently random, by all means, please provide a link to a discussion thereof ASAP, as I and I'm sure many other /.ers need to make some changes in our configs...
[pedantic] OK, so you're saying "PIN numbers", where PIN is "Personal Identification Number". Do you enter your "PIN numbers" at the "PIN number keyboard board" on the "ATM machines"? At least you could have been consistent, and used "password words" while you were at it? =:^) [/pedantic]
Meanwhile, while I agree with your general point, I believe it would have been made more effectively, at least to many here at /. (who pride themselves on being a "thinking" audience highly valuing freedom, true or not), had you not invoked the "Think of the children!!1!!111!" bit. Unfortunately, both it and the "war on terror" have been so overused by the fascist/authoritarian/big-brother types recently that they have lost much of their original effectiveness, and indeed, many of us have a gut reaction every time we see them invoked of "Oh, another proponent of /that/ stuff, time to watch my liberties as he's obviously trying to take one or more away, and is grasping for some semblance of justification."
So next time, consider leaving that bit out. The effect on personal financial and etc. information and passwords and the like, should be enough on its own to get people rethinking their position. The graphical physical reference, be it child abuse, rape your women, or indeed, personal anal penetration, really does more to hurt your case than help, at least here on /., tho it may arguably go a long way when targeting a different audience, the remaining "Bible, Bush & Homeland" types. (FWIW, the work "homeland" alone has strong fascist links, which is why I wondered why in the world the powers that be chose the particular term "Homeland Security". Could it be they were so indoctrinated they didn't realize the historical links of homeland and fatherland to Nazi Germany? Unless it was a deliberate reference?)
Those are the "mainline" or "linus" sources (thus answering one of the things you were unsure of), yes. They're "official" to the degree that any particular sources are official, but that's partly the point. There's no "official" sources, only a particular series that's the linus/mainline tree that the community strongly and definitely encourages people to be compatible with and ultimately integrate their patchsets into, but /only/ to that degree.
Meanwhile, not only does git go to some lengths to facilitate branches (as it calls forks), but the kernel development process is strongly dependent on a heavily forked kernel development environment assumption. Every one of the subsystem maintainers effectively has his own official tree/fork, plus often dozens of experimental forks, some for private testing, some for public distribution of specifically targeted testing. While new drivers and experimental features are encouraged to ultimately merge with the linus tree, the expectation and general practice is that some fork of said tree will be where the new code lives until that occurs.
The kernel lives and breaths, develops, and dies, by forking (or in the latter case, if forking should ever itself die). It's a built-in assumption, and there's simply no way Linux as we know it could or would exist, without that assumption. Thus, the only ones discouraging forking would be those bent on its destruction.
Now, talk incompatible/unfriendly forking, and it's a somewhat different story, but even there, it's allowed if someone should wish, just rather impractical from a continuing maintenance standpoint, and because few would follow.
BTW, the older kernel mentioned was 2.6.16, I believe. I forget who the maintainer was but he backported new drivers, etc, for some time, just to give folks a less fast-paced choice beyond going back to 2.4, for those that wanted it. He has since announced that either 2.6.28 or 2.6.29 (I think .28 but IDR for sure) he'll do the same thing with.
An initrd, or the modern equivalent, an initramfs which is appended to the kernel so it isn't a separate file to track, is useful in (at least) two primary cases.
Rich0 named one, where the rootfs is layered on top of complex stuff like LVM2 that requires user mode initialization. There's no way to pass boot-time parameters to the kernel to load lvm2, it has to be loaded by user mode, which means if the rootfs is on lvm2, there must be some pre-real-root minimal-usermode available to load lvm2, so root can be loaded.
The second is rather a generalization of the above, to cover the case of the binary binary kernels shipped with most distributions. There's a /lot/ of different storage hardware out there that the rootfs could be installed on, a /variety/ of different hardware that the user could be using for basic input/display, and quite a number of reasonable filesystem choices for rootfs, as well. While a kernel with support for all that or even just the more common choices built-in could certainly be built, it /would/ be bloated. And while say britty (Braille tty) drivers aren't commonly required, it's sure nice to be able to support the sightless. So they are built as modules which can be loaded as necessary. But then those modules need stored somewhere, and some method needs to be available to load them early in the boot sequence, before the rootfs has been mounted since some of them will be required to mount it. An initrd/initramfs is a great solution, allowing maximum flexibility while keeping the size of the core kernel to something reasonable.
The second case is of course why most distributions ship with an initrd. They can support far more storage hardware, user interface devices, and rootfs choices that way, while still shipping a binary kernel and not requiring a user to recompile anything. However, once a user has advanced to the point where they can pick their hardware and basic kernel option out of some version of menuconfig and issue a few simple commands to recompile a kernel, thereby customizing it for their own system, there's usually (but for the complex stuff like lvm2) little or no reason they can't eliminate that initrd/initramfs entirely, building at least the modules needed to load the rootfs, as part of that customization. Since doing so simplifies the kernel build and installation process substantially while eliminating a number of possible boot-time issues, IMO it's actually better to eliminate the initrd/initramfs except in the few cases it's still actually necessary, once a user gets to that point and is building their own kernels.
Well put. I find my challenges in other areas more now. Thanks.
I'm in the same situation, I read much less SF than I used to, but come at it from a much different angle.
I always was and remain a "hard" science fiction buff. I never was really into the fantasy/medieval stuff at all. Sure I'd read it occasionally and subscribed to F&SF for awhile, but it was always toleration more than anything, while wishing they'd replace it with "real" science fiction! Even the "big" Fantasy works I got and read (if I ever did read, some I meant to but never got around to it), it was more a peer and cultural literacy thing than really enjoying it like I did good "real" science fiction.
For me, there was always a purpose. For me, good science fiction has always been an "epistemological", an exploration of the reaches and limits of human knowledge, where it might plausibly take us if current science trends are projected as much as possibly logically into the future, and how science development so projected might affect humans both as a race and individually. The more "real" science and less contradiction with real science there was, even tho it was a projection into the future, the more I enjoyed it!
So SF was for me an exploration of knowledge, but it actually ended up being far more than that for me, personally. Many readers with a psychology bent will be familiar with Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development. Wrong or right in the general case, they do happen to be a reasonable fit for describing the moral maturation process I went thru growing up. As it happened, I entered high school basically a Kohlberg moral stage ahead of where most of my peers were at the time (I was at stage four, law and order, going in, while they were at stage three, peer orientation), and while I attended a so-called "Christian" high school where moral development was nominally one of the first priorities and did progress a stage over that period, it certainly was NOT due to the molding of those in charge at the school, because they were /far/ too busy working on the majority at the peer orientation to get them to law and order, to pay attention to me, already at law and order, maturing as best I could toward stage five, rights orientation.
So the fact that I DID progress to Kohlberg stage five, rights orientation, during high school was almost an accident, as far as the actions of the so-called Christian faculty and staff were concerned. In fact, it was the constant presentation of moral dilemmas in the science fiction I was reading at the time, quite against the wishes of said school adults and thus in spite of them, that stimulated my moral development during that period, and as a result, that still plays a rather large part in the now internalized ideals by which I conduct myself today.
But... "when I was a child, I though as a child," as the (Bible) saying goes. As an adult, I have "put away childish things." Yes, I still enjoy a good scifi novel now and then, but it's not like it used to be, because I've matured out of that phase. While I strongly believe it's worthwhile to consider the evolution of science and our response to it as we go, indeed, /before/ we go, a teen is rightly more future-focused than an adult of a couple decades already is going to be, and they have a LOT more time to spend on that sort of thing, as well. Similarly, all those formerly intensely interesting moral quandaries, intensely interesting to me personally as they forced me to explore entirely new degrees of moral implications, stimulating my development as I did so, aren't quite so intensely interesting any more. I've explored the moral implications and for better or worse, I've already come to terms with how I relate to the universe and those around me. That's no longer new territory and thus while still interesting, doesn't have quite the personal degree of urgency that it used to.
So... I really don't do as much science fiction as I used to. It's not that I don't enjoy it any more, it's that it doesn't hold the urgency it used
I like your idea, but I take it a bit farther myself. I'd like to see no OS with more than a plurality, none with an outright majority of the market. Thus, based more or less on current share but with MS taking a hit to be distributed elsewhere (so I'm not as biased against the BSDs as this might look, I'd LOVE for them to have the 30% share and Apple to get 1.5%), I'd be happy to see MS at say 35-45% (still a nice plurality), Linux and Apple at 20-30% each, and OpenSolaris and a couple of the open source BSDs (probably Free and Dragonfly, from what I know of BSDs which isn't much) at 1.5 to 5% each.
So say 41+29+24+2.4+2.0+1.8 (to two significant digits each, the reason it doesn't total exactly 100%).
But... honestly, I have my doubts as to whether MS as we know it is sustainable at below heavy-monopoly share levels (say below 70% or so). Take a look at the browser share recently. IE's total dropped below 70% in December (tho January may be up slightly, given that weekends and holidays skew away from IE since it has heavier corporate use, and December was nearly half holiday for many). Firefox is the biggest alternative but Safari, Chrome, and other, seem to be growing as well. What's the skuttlebutt on that? Well, MS' ability to rule the web by mindshare (based on marketshare) has all but disappeared. Now that they've dropped to that, many are saying there doesn't seem to be a bottom any time soon, and people are actually talking about it possibly dropping below 50% majority share for the first time in a LONG time. Only ask yourself what if it does? Is there really a floor at 40%? 30%?
Personally, if they drop below say the mid 50s, I don't see a floor below until they hit the 20s to low 30s. At that point, their installed base is high enough to carry them for some time, a decade or longer, on momentum from people who simply won't switch to anything else, period, even if MS does virtually nothing. Only they won't be doing nothing.
But with very little doubt, should that start to happen, the MS we know today will cease to exist. No, the company itself probably won't disappear, but it'll be MUCH MUCH different. It'll HAVE to be, because today, it simply doesn't know how to behave unless it's a monopoly in its assigned areas, and wouldn't know what to do if it wasn't. That would HAVE to change, and change it would!
A post I read up-page got me thinking. What happens if Windows 7 DOES bomb much like Vista has? Well MS is still making money pretty much hand over fist, and that's not likely to change right away no matter what. But what could/would they say, what sort of answer could they give?
Well, between that and the headline that's the cause of this entire article, the layoffs, what I came up with was this: Suppose MS says something like this:
"OK, we got it. We listened to our customers. They are saying they like XP as it is. It does what they need it to do, and they're happy with it. But they're asking for it on netbooks at one end, and we have multi-core machines to worry about at the other. And their asking for lower prices.
"So we're going to give them what they asked for. We'll support and provide bug and security fixes, and we'll work on the back end to continue to increase the richness of experience possible at the low end and the number of cores and parallelization at the high end, and we're going to continue to support new hardware and Internet standards, but our users say we're a mature product and that they us to keep what they have usable, not continue to force new stuff on them just for the sake of it. We're announcing accross the board 75% price cuts on list price, and will be announcing further price reductions over time. Meanwhile, since we're a mature product now, we don't need to spend as much on new development and will be laying off 50% (or 75%, or whatever) of our workforce."
Consider: The development and costs for XP and Vista are sunk costs now, and by the time we know if Windows 7 is bombing or not, the same wil
Note that Google is already marketing Linux based OS, Android, and no, it's not just for phones, people are adapting it and running it on netbooks (among other things) already.
I don't see them reversing course and switching to BSD any time soon, tho for all I know they already have one about to drop. But I DO know they already have a Linux based OS, Android. Now, ask yourself why Google might have chosen Linux over BSD for Android... but I'll let you draw your own conclusions there.
The most annoying thing about DSL for me is the fact that my phone is NOT tied up all the time. I get a telemarketing call five to ten times a day, on average.
Serious question, tho you might need to read thru to see it: You have broadband, why do you keep a regular voice phone connected if you're getting that many spam calls over it.
Now DSL piggybacking over a voice line does complicate things a bit as compared to say my cable Internet connection (no, no CATV, I don't even have a TV to use CATV, just Internet), or the dedicated (not piggybacked) "dry pair" DSL I had for awhile, but just because the DSL mandates a voice line to piggyback on doesn't mean you actually have to /use/ that voice line -- you can just consider it part of the cost of Internet, if you like.
So what then to use for voice? Well, many folks use cell phones, which tend to be lower spam call volume at least in the US due to the cell-user-pays-air-time rules and resulting laws about unsolicited calls to them. For those that have or can at least partially justify them for other reasons, that's good, but I could never honestly justify the extra cost of cell service over standard landline -- for my usage, I just can't justify it.
So what do I use, and the following why this post? VoIP. There are a lot of providers out there and I really do urge you to do some research and find the one that's right for you, as unlike either landline or cell service, the fact that the provider doesn't have to have any local physical plant means it's FULLY competitive -- the provider can be literally anywhere, worldwide, that has reasonable connectivity, and provide service equally worldwide. That means it's EXTREMELY competitive, a buyer's market, and the buyer who shops around can get some very nice deals indeed, with some very nice perks indeed.
All those extra services like caller-ID and voice-mail that cost extra money on land-lines? Competition has made them standard on VoIP. It's hard to find a provider that does NOT offer them. Also, due to the nature of the technology, nearly every provider offering US service has a base or near-base plan that's flat-rate per-month nationwide calling -- no domestic long-distance charges. Many include Canada as well. Providers who offer numbers in other nations likewise generally offer either flat-rate or extremely competitive (in nations where regulations require charges, usually where the monopolist telco is government run and they're regulating out the VoIP alternative, tho that's getting rarer due to various international telecom agreements) national rates.
So with all that standard, and with rates pretty standardized for that base as well, what do providers compete on? Extra features, features landline telcos generally don't offer at all. Some (such as Lingo) offer flat rate international calling plans and international second numbers at very reasonable (+$5/mo) rates. These work very well for users with family or friends in covered countries. Others offer fancier services. My provider (viavoice) offers automated wakeup and "special date" (anniversary, bday, etc) calls, among other things.
But the service that makes the difference in terms of phone spam, and as I've been with them for awhile, the service that I've found of most value and the "keeper" reason I'm not likely to jump providers, is their unidentified-caller routing/blocking choices. They have the usual "route directly to voicemail", "play a recording saying this user doesn't accept unidentified callers", "busy signal", etc, options. But the one I use and have found so compelling is the "ask them to enter a series of digits to prove it's a real human calling before ringing thru" option. People who choose to block their caller-id can still call me, but they have to dial a few extra random digits at the prompt, in ordered to do so.
You'd be surprised at how much that reduces your phone spam! Coupled with the fact that I deliberately did NOT transfer my e
OTOH I use my real name (Duncan) pretty much everywhere I post on the net, partly because I tend to believe if it's worth the trouble to post, it's worth sticking my name on and standing by, and I do just that. Actually, that's my last name. I used first and last, John Duncan, but found that even more common than simply Duncan, so eventually just dropped the John.
But while I believe I've established a decent enough online "brand" for most folks that know me from one forum/newsgroup/mailing-list to identify me on another if they come across me, the name is common enough, and there's little enough else about me on the net, that I expect it'd be relatively difficult to make the association without my help.
Still, as I said, I do stick by what I post enough to stick my name on it, and if some potential employer or the like does make the connection and finds my posts offensive enough to negatively affect my chances of working there, I expect I'd rather not be working there anyway, and they probably just saved me a lot of grief later by dropping me from consideration when they did. If they think they're better off without me, good, because if it's due to what I've posted, I /know/ I'm better off without them, and if my posts help that happen before the relationship ever starts, so much the better! I'll be better off elsewhere anyway.
Try this paraphrase out for size:
"I am as big a fan of Open [Employment] as the next slashdotter, but there seems to be this feeling that because some[one] is [a free[man] or open [employed] it is automatically better."
While the work a freeman and a slave may produce may indeed be the same, depending on your ethics, yes, one is "automatically better." While the work a free/libre program and a closed/unfree/slaveryware program produce may be the same, depending on your ethics as a dev or awareness as a user, yes, one may be better.
Now, I don't believe it's yet time to do the Emancipation Proclamation thing for software.
but I DO believe that an ethical software developer must respect the rights of his users. Failing to do so may not yet be against the law tho like slavery I hope there comes a time it is, but while law and ethics may be related concepts, they aren't identical, and an action may be entirely permitted (even required) by one, while being entirely prohibited by the other.
Note that such a philosophy may initially appear to permit "ethical" copyright violation and that it does, but "ethical" and "intelligent" are independent concepts. If a developer has been so unethical as to presume to abrogate the user's rights of use, study, modification, and sharing of both the original and modified versions, then he has already demonstrated that he's a black-hat and not to be trusted. What else may he be trying to hide in that naturally transparent box he's attempting to keep painted black? Whatever it is, how can I trust the code of someone who has already demonstrated his disregard for my rights as an intelligent and free human, who has already demonstrated a desire to subvert my rights to his uses.
IMO, one effective way to handle it would be to simply enforce informed consent for the usual liability waivers. If the dev or company wishes to keep the code locked up, let them, but since that interferes with the informed consent of the user, liability waivers should be held to be invalid -- the people that supplied the binaries must either supply the sources (without impinging my user rights to reuse them), or be held responsible for the effects of the black box they supplied. Since developers/companies would be insane to take on uninsured damage liability, and the insurance companies would demand pretty stiff premiums to ensure what wasn't open for inspection, the problem would take care of itself, while still allowing the few companies that DO supply software while assuming the damages (there are a few, think embedded airplane OSs) to continue to do so without freeing source. But even most of them may ultimately switch to mostly freedomware, both because they'd be able to get it at least partially pre-audited. and because the culture of freedom that would develop in such a case would ultimately require it in practice even if not enforced by law.
Meanwhile, for me personally, since if I can't both inspect the code and have others I trust evaluate it as well (without further legal impediments), I won't release the supplier from operational liability, there's little proprietaryware I could run even if I wanted to and might otherwise overlook their insulting me as a potential user, believing I value my rights so little as to give them up for the mere privilege of being insulted and taken advantage of as a subhuman slave, because I'm not allowed to use it without releasing them from liability, which I cannot and will not do. OTOH, there's no problem with freedomware altho they also require liability waivers, because I can both read the sources for myself and get the opinions of others I trust as to the quality and potential reliability and security of said code.